Must Love Vampires

by Heidi Betts

Watching what he was doing, seeing her pale skin and voluptuous curves come into view inch by agonizing inch, would most certainly send him over the edge. And then he would have guilt to deal with, and apologies to make, to both this woman and his younger brother.

  Like a Band-Aid, he tugged the costume down in one great yank, making sure to snag the waistband of the drool-inducing fishnets along the way. When he had her completely stripped—at least he hoped she was completely stripped—he quickly shook out the clean and pressed pajama bottoms and worked them over her feet. All by feel and with his eyes tightly closed.

  Oh, if his brother could see him now. Well, no, that probably wouldn’t be very bright. The last thing he wanted was for his brother to see him with his naked girlfriend draped across his bed. But in another time and place, with some other woman naked and passed out in his bed, Aidan would find this highly entertaining.

  Aidan thought Sebastian rigid and uptight; never a smile, a chuckle, or the tiniest hint of a sense of humor. Never a thread or hair out of place. He was all business all the time. Hundreds of years of being the eldest sibling—not to mention an immortal who needed to keep that small fact a complete and total secret—had made him that way, and he refused to apologize for it.

  Which was why this particular situation was so unlike him . . . and why Aidan would probably laugh himself stupid over it, if he knew.

  Even Sebastian could see a modicum of amusement in the picture he surely made, undressing one of his showgirls with his eyes squeezed tightly shut. This was far from how he normally performed when he had a beautiful woman in his bed.

  Letting the elastic band snap at her waist, he turned away to find the undershirt, then did the same Blind Man’s Grab to get it over her head and down to cover the rise of that sumptuous chest. Even though his eyes were closed (and he didn’t peek, really he didn’t), that didn’t stop him from imagining every detail of what he was working so hard to cover. Especially as his fingers slid down her arms, along her waist, and pointedly avoided getting too close to those breasts that even now had his muscles tensing and his mind going straight for the tripleX section of the pay-per-view menu.

  Just as he had the hem of the undershirt pulled down around her hips, and thought it was probably safe to stand back and check his work, she groaned. His eyes popped open at the same moment hers did. Surprisingly, she didn’t look nearly as shocked to find him towering over her as he felt.

  “What happened?” she asked in a sandy, sleepy voice.

  Sebastian’s first instinct was to tell her—to explain why she was in his bed and how she’d gotten into his clothes before he ended up with a screaming, shrieking female on his hands. Again.

  Then he remembered his initial goal in “coaxing” her to open up. He’d meant for her to go cross-eyed and spill the beans, not faint at his feet, but now that she was once again conscious, but still groggy . . . There was no time like the present.

  With slow movements, he approached the bed, rearranging the pillows at her back and helping to prop her into a better sitting position before lowering his hip to the mattress beside her.

  “Chloe,” he murmured, “listen to me.”

  She blinked, but held his gaze. Unable to resist, he lifted a hand and brushed it down the side of her face, through the soft waves of her chestnut hair.

  “I need you to answer some questions for me. All right?”

  Her eyes were just the right shade of violet—wide, black pupils with a ring of bright color around the outside. And while there was still knowledge there, intelligence, awareness, she was mesmerized, as well. Just enough. With no signs of being ready to slip back off into oblivion.

  Good.

  “Chloe,” he said softly.

  She shook her head, making his mouth turn down in a frown. “Not Chloe. Charlotte.” Then her nose wrinkled. “Hate that name. Call me Chuck.”

  It was Sebastian’s turn to blink in confusion. Not Chloe? How could that possibly be? And yet this explanation was something she’d uttered a million times before, he could tell. She was obviously used to telling people she hated her given name and would prefer to be called by the shorter, more masculine “Chuck.”

  Reorganizing the order of the questions swimming around in his head, he decided to start with the easy stuff—scoff . . . there was the understatement of the century—and build from there.

  “Who’s Chloe?” he asked simply.

  In an almost mechanical tone, she said, “Sister.”

  “Older or younger?”

  “Younger by two minutes.”

  Twins! he thought as comprehension dawned. Followed by, Son of a bitch.

  He’d grabbed the wrong sister. How the hell had he grabbed the wrong flipping sister?

  Sebastian played back over everything he knew about Chloe Lamoreaux, mostly supplied by what little Aidan had shared about his latest lady love. Brown hair, nice body, showgirl for Lust, the dance revue club in his very own casino.

  His gaze traveled the length of the feminine form stretched out along his bedclothes. Brown hair, rockin’—er—nice body (if nice was equivalent to the sexiest, hottest, most nubile thing he’d ever seen), and she had to be a showgirl.

  He’d watched her onstage. Caught her as she’d walked offstage. Found her wearing one of Lust’s trademark red-and-orange “Flames of Hell” costumes, complete with feathers and sequins and stockings and platform neck-breaker heels. If that wasn’t clear confirmation that she was a dancer, he’d go downstairs, walk up to the nearest roulette table, and put his entire vast, vast, vaaaaaast fortune on black.

  And yet this wasn’t the sister he’d been after. He didn’t think. Either he had it wrong . . . or Aidan did.

  His brows knit in consternation. “What does your sister do?” he asked. And then, for clarification, added, “As her job. What’s her occupation?”

  “Showgirl,” Chuck answered automatically, still glassyeyed. “Dances at Lust inside the Inferno. Doesn’t want to forever, though. Kicks are hard on the knees. Guys’ pinches are hard on the ass.” She chuckled at that, as though it was a long-standing joke between the two sisters.

  Well, at least he and Aidan were right about that much.

  “And what do you do?”

  If he was expecting a similar explanation, he should have remembered that where this woman was concerned, it was just one surprise after another.

  “Reporter. For the Sin City Tattler.” Her nose wrinkled at that. “Good at it, but no respect. Tired of making up shit about flying saucers and Bigfoot sightings. Need a good story. One really good, true story.” Her lips tilted upward, flashing her pearly whites.

  That grin—which he’d seen a time or two on cats that had just swallowed beloved goldfish—told him she already had a story in mind. He wasn’t sure he should care or even needed to know, but curiosity won out, and he found himself asking, “What story is that?”

  She was still staring off into space, not really seeing him, and yet she sat up straighter, as though getting ready to impart some grave secret. “Sebastian Raines,” she whispered.

  His eyes rolled back in his head. Christ on a cracker, was there no reprieve from the roller-coaster ride this woman had him on? It was one sharp climb and sudden drop after another.

  Pressing two fingers to the arch of his nose, he tried to push back the headache throbbing there. A bloody headache, when he’d never suffered one before in his life.

  Vampires didn’t get headaches, or if they did, it was tantamount to a gnat buzzing at the hide of a rhino—so insignificant as to go completely unnoticed.

  But here he was with the mother of them all.

  Or maybe it was an aneurism. An aneurism brought on by stress was entirely possible. It would certainly explain the intense pain banging against the inside of his skull like a jai alai ball.

  At this point, he could only hope for death. It wouldn’t last, of course, but it might be a nice reprieve.

  Lowering his hand from his face, taking a deep breat
h to shore himself up for whatever answer she might give to his next question, he asked, “What about Sebastian Raines? What story are you working on about him?”

  She leaned in even closer, until their noses nearly touched. He smelled that scent again—flowers touched by citrus—as her gaze drilled into his.

  There was something there this time. Not recognition, but an intensity. Feeling behind what she was about to say.

  “He’s a vampire,” she told him in the merest wisp of breath. “And I’m going to prove it.”

  Three of a Kind

  Chuck came to herself in a blink. Literally.

  It was the oddest thing. One minute she was asleep—she thought—and the next she was wide awake, sitting straight up in bed.

  Not her bed, though. She glanced around, realizing she was not just in the bedroom of Sebastian Raines’s phenomenal penthouse, but taking up space on his personal mattress.

  She did not remember that. Going through his wine rack and beginning to snoop in his closet, yes. But climbing into his bed . . . Who was she, Goldilocks?

  No, she definitely didn’t remember getting into—or on to, as the case may be—his bed.

  Or his clothes.

  Looking down, she noticed she had somehow gotten out of Chloe’s “Flames of Hell” costume and into . . . Oh, no. They couldn’t be . . . Sebastian Raines’s pajamas? Half of them, anyway—the bottom half—and a plain white undershirt.

  Didn’t a woman usually get undressed, have (hopefully) mind-blowing sex, then jump into a man’s clothes? She had no recollection of any of those things. And if she’d been lucky enough to have mind-blowing, twisty stix pretzel sex, she really wanted to remember it.

  In her peripheral vision, she noticed a form and turned her head to discover that she wasn’t alone in the room. A man— Sebastian Raines himself, she assumed—was standing with his back to her, staring out the window at the bright city lights playing against the still-dark night sky.

  His black hair and the midnight blue of his tailored suit melded with the shadows hanging all around him, making him nearly invisible. It was only the paler hue of his hands clasped behind his back and his face in profile that had caught her attention at all.

  She must have made a noise . . . or perhaps he heard the slight inhalation of her surprised breath when she noticed him standing there . . . because his arms fell to his sides and he turned in her direction.

  The oxygen she’d sucked into her lungs just a moment before got stuck there at the sharp lines of his features and the intensity in his silver-gray eyes. She honestly couldn’t tell if he was angry, or if the stony expression was normal for him, but she was pretty sure she would never want to cross him, just in case.

  His lashes fluttered slightly as he closed his eyes for the briefest second before opening them again and fixing her with a steady, determined gaze.

  “What makes you think I’m a vampire?” he asked in a low, graveled voice. Without warning, without preamble.

  Chuck gasped, more shocked than if he’d thrown a bucket of ice water over her head. How did he know she thought that? How had he found out?

  Was that why she was here, in his apartment? Had he somehow discovered she was following him and dragged her up here to torture her for information, to find out how much she knew, and then either drain her dry before killing her outright or turn her into one of the walking undead?

  In her best imitation of a crab, she scurried backwards on the mattress until she hit pillows and the immovable bulk of the bed’s headboard. As though moving ten inches farther away and curling herself into a ball was going to keep Nosferatu from eating her for dinner.

  “I . . .” The single short word came out as little more than a squeak. She paused to clear her throat, then tried again. “I . . .” Breathy this time, with only a hint of squeakiness at the end. “Don’t . . . know . . .” Her mouth went dry and she could barely force out the rest. “Wh-what you’re . . . talking about.”

  He raised a brow—an evil, menacing brow?—and she shivered.

  “Yes, you do.” He stated it matter-of-factly, but remained exactly where he was. No going all Bela Lugosi on her or swooping in like a vampire (snork) bat, fangs bared. “You talk in your sleep.”

  Okay, she totally didn’t think that was true. Of course, since she’d been sleeping alone much longer than she cared to admit, she couldn’t exactly call any witnesses to the contrary.

  But while they were on the subject, how the heck had she gotten to sleep in the first place? She didn’t remember lying down, feeling drowsy, deciding to take a nice, restoring nap in a complete stranger’s—not to mention her unsuspecting (or maybe very suspecting, given the circumstances she currently found herself in) quarry’s—penthouse.

  Much like when she’d first woken up in the living room earlier—and how much earlier, she had no clue—her memory was horribly sketchy. Unless it was some strange dream, she thought she remembered standing in the doorway of his closet, then having him come up behind her, scaring her half to death. There had been some screaming, and his hand over her mouth . . . and then a small confrontation in the kitchen over all of the opened, half-drunk bottles of wine she’d left there.

  Maybe. And nothing after that.

  It was completely bizarre for her to suddenly be having these horrible gaps in her memory. Now she knew how Swiss cheese felt.

  A sudden thought popped into her head, making her gasp in alarm. And not because she was about to be nibbled on by some demon of lore, either.

  Oh, God! This was how brain tumors were diagnosed. Loss of memory. Gaps of missing time. Blackouts followed by awakenings in odd places without viable explanation. She didn’t smell toast, but that symptom could be next.

  “If you were a vampire,” she suddenly blurted, “and someone was dying of an incurable disease, could you change them?”

  It was his turn to be caught off guard, she guessed, judging by the lift of one dark brow.

  Folding his arms across his broad chest, he rolled back on his heels, studying her. “Why do you ask?”

  She struggled not to choke on her own emotions, not to let the tears pricking behind her eyes spill over. “Because I think I’m dying. I think I’ve got a brain tumor, and it’s getting bad fast. I can’t remember anything. I don’t know how I got here or how long I’ve been here or how I got into these clothes.”

  She plucked at the white cotton shirt that hung off one shoulder and billowed around her like a toga sheet. Oh! And it clearly showed her dark areolas and stiff nipples.

  Gack, how embarrassing! She quickly folded her arms over her breasts, hiding them as best she could. But there was no doubt Sebastian had already seen them. How could he not, even without super-duper vampire vision?

  He rolled his eyes at her, but not before she noticed his gaze flicking over her barely hidden upper assets.

  “You don’t have a brain tumor,” he told her in a nearscoff.

  She gave him a cross look before snapping, “How do you know? Are you a doctor, as well as a wealthy casino owner and clandestine bloodsucker?”

  “I’m not a doctor, no,” he said slowly.

  Chuck waited for him to elaborate, but he didn’t. And even though she could feel the tumor growing exponentially inside her head with every second that ticked by, some of her brain cells were still in tip-top shape.

  “Oh, my God,” she murmured. “You’re telling me . . . You’re telling me that you’re not a doctor, but you are a wealthy casino owner . . . and a vampire.”

  When he didn’t respond to that accusation, either, simply continued to stand there, staring at her with those strangely eerie shadow-gray eyes, she knew she was right.

  “I knew it!” she crowed, hopping up on her knees and bouncing like a schoolgirl at a sleepover. “I knew it. I was right.”

  And then sensibility returned, and she realized where she was . . . and what her sudden knowledge could mean to her dubious future.

  Falling back on her heels,
she went still. “Are you going to kill me now that I know?” she asked in a low voice. It didn’t waver, which was nice, even though inside she had begun to shake.

  One corner of his mouth lifted in momentary amusement. “No, I’m not going to kill you.”

  He stepped toward her, his face once again a flat, unreadable mask. To her credit, she stayed where she was instead of doing the first-girl-to-trip-and-die horror movie shriek and scuttling to the other side of the bed.

  But she watched him. Watched his sleek, muscular frame flow like water beneath the immaculate cut of his silken, almost metallic suit. His dark hair was perfectly styled, and his skin was light, but not too light. It was clear he didn’t spend much time out in the hot Las Vegas sun, but he wasn’t as pale as parchment paper, either.

  Stopping just beside the bed, he let his long fingers trail along the edge of the navy spread, his attention focused with odd intent on the pattern of stitching he found there.

  “First, I’d like to know why you suspect me of being a vampire,” he said, “and then I’m going to do something I’ve never done before.”

  At that, he lifted his head, meeting her gaze head-on. Her stomach lurched and butterflies took flight. But not because she was nervous or he scared her. She was very much afraid the sensations swamping her were due to . . . sexual attraction.

  No surprise there, not really. Even if Sebastian was a member of the blood-chugging elite, he also happened to be extremely hawt. Tall, Dark, and Handsome with a capital T, D, and H.

  She licked her lips, doing her best to stifle the unexpected and long-absent yearning prickling beneath her skin. “What’s that?” she asked, although she was almost afraid to know.

  “I’m going to tell you everything.”

  Sebastian had spent the entire time he’d waited for Charlotte—Chuck—to swim back to consciousness trying to decide what to do with her.

  He knew what he should do: Take her home, wipe her mind of any recollection of her interactions with him, and go after the Lamoreaux sister he’d meant to grab in the first place.

  But it had been so long since any human had even thought to imagine what he truly was. So long since he’d had someone to talk to, really talk to.